A big part of the "problem" with electronic music is also one of its biggest charms: it does not sound human. It's too perfect, the resolution is too high, it lacks the "warmth" of analog recording techniques. The things that make it unique are what some people don't seem to enjoy. Electronic producers, some of them, go to great lengths to give their recordings the analog "feel" and warmth that is a natural byproduct of traditional analog recording.
There are extremely expensive analog processors that can help add warmth to a recording without any loss of fidelity. In fact, these processors add fidelity and warmth, but they are prohibitively expensive - $20k-$30k and up. The less expensive and more imperfect way to give electronic recordings warmth is to track them to analog tape, though you can lose the strict timing that is the trademark of electronically constructed rhythm, and you are of course losing some fidelity and resolution.
It sounds absurd, that a producer would willingly degrade the resolution and timing of their recordings to make something sound older. Many audio experts agree the differences are mostly imaginary, and the perceived superiority of analog recording is one of those lies aging people tell themselves about the world having been a better place when they were younger. If you grew up listening to analog music you can probably recognize the sound of an analog recording when played comparatively or as a contrast with a digital recording. Why? Because it doesn't sound quite as clean and clear, or loud and mixed as well. Yet why does almost everyone who can detect the difference prefer the older analog track?
I've never heard anybody provide an adequate explanation that doesn't devolve into a version of: old people are stupid and they stop growing.
Perhaps, but I believe there's more. I'm trying to get CS to mail me back another gift I gave him years ago. Though, in fairness, he loves having it, I think. It's a cool artifact. Though... he has stored it in an attic in Florida; subjected it to hurricanes; it's probably not sealed; rodents and raccoons have expired in close proximity to it; he drinks heavily; roams the house in dirty underwear, etc. It is difficult to know what has become of the little tape recorder that could.
I have promised to send him something far more useful in return. I'm still heroically inclined. Maybe he needs a a pre-amp for boosting mic inputs.
The anachronistic in question....
Trashcan Portastudio 464:
These devices are of interest to people like me precisely because they sound worse than what I can do any on given day in my current studio. But they convert certain frequencies in difficult to describe ways that make electronic music sometimes sound better. They do very little/nothing for most applications when compared to a laptop. Any computer made recording will sound better than it would recorded with tape.
Well, unless you know how to achieve that rare lofi special magic that is in large part the location of the recording, part performance, part production skills, and at least some part luck and dogged repetition.
Why am I writing all of this? Because I've re-assembled a (mostly) digital recording studio and I am trying to explore and discover ways to make what I do sound less perfect. Almost anybody can make electronic music now. They have programs that can let you choose a key and a modality and it will prevent you from ever playing a "wrong" note. Whichever note you play on the keyboard, the computer will simply adjust it to one that is closest to being in key with the track you've chosen to make. They can even randomize notes and quantize timings to give your keyboard playing more character than it might have otherwise. There are programs that will automatically adjust every sample in your track to the key and time that you're working in. The result: there is a tremendous amount of nearly identical, very boring, homogenous electronic music out there.
Well, it is easier to make a boring track than it is to make a good one. I've done both.
Why go back and do something that I did in my 20s and 30s, you possibly ask? I don't know. I miss it, I guess. I miss having a reason to interact with some of my older friends. I became a father, got a job, then got a good job, raised a son, ushered him to an age where he is starting to develop his own interests which are independent of mine and even of me.
Don't fret, it's not all over, we're going snowboarding, just he and I, this weekend, if the weather invites it. We're still grand buddies with the imagination that suits our respective ages.
Though, there are interests that remain dormant, but you hear the conversations with yourself when you listen to certain music. Produce instead of consuming.
It seems ameliorative to pursue something of which I am capable, something I can enjoy entirely by myself. All trepidation leaving the body, inhibitions being forgotten, the anguish of lost years being forgiven.
No, I am wanting to end with an exaggeration of conclusion. It is late and I am tired, and the world awaits me sooner each morning now that I've been staying up later. Time passes with unforgiving shifts in regularity, just like the liquid language of music.
Talking about music is like prancing about acupuncture...
mostly digital; analog filters, mixer
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